Belgian police are on the hunt for a Palestinian asylum seeker who threatened to blow himself up after hearing that his entire family had been killed in Gaza amid the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel.
All police units across Belgium are seeking 23-year-old Mohammed A., who said on Tuesday October 25, that he wants to ‘die as a martyr by explosion’ after hearing that his family had been killed.
He reportedly applied for asylum on September 26 and was told he had to turn up again the following day, but failed to do so.
A spokesman for the Brussels public prosecutor’s office said that it was aware of the threats allegedly made by Mohammed A.: ‘The person of Palestinian origin is currently being actively traced. In the interest of the investigation, no further comment will be made.’
No additional security measures were taken at Brussels Airport, or the Jewish Institution in Antwerp, following the news of the manhunt.
His threats were made just a week after two Swedish football fans were killed, while a third was wounded, by an ISIS fanatic armed with an automatic rifle, in what the attacker said was revenge for the death of a six-year-old Palestinian boy in the US.
Belgium’s terror treat level is still at ‘serious’, the second-highest level, a week after armed police shot Tunisian suspect Abdesalem Lassoued, 45, dead cornered inside a café in the Brussels neighbourhood of Schaerbeek.
He opened fire on a group of Swedish football fans in a taxi passing through Boulevard d’Ypres just a few minutes north of the city’s famous Grand Plaza ahead of Belgium’s Euro 2024 qualifier against Sweden.
He said in a video posted to social media: ‘I am a fighter for Allah. I am from the Islamic State. We love who loves us, and we hate who hates us.
‘We live for our religion and we die for our religion, Alhamdulillah. Your brother took revenge in the name of Muslims.
‘I have killed three Swedes so far, Alhamdulillah. Three Swedish, yes.
‘Those to whom I have done something wrong, may they forgive me. And I forgive everyone. Salam Alaykum’.
Lassoued unsuccessfully sought asylum in Belgium in 2019, and had been illegally living in the country for several years since then.
